Don't Miss PA Professor of the Year's One-Man Show, The Trouble with My Name

Dr. Javier Ávila, The Trouble with My Name

September 20

Pennsylvania’s 2015 Professor of the Year, Dr. Javier Ávila, is beloved at Northampton Community College, where students of English find that his engaging style makes poetry and paper-writing unexpectedly awesome. His autobiographical one-man show, The Trouble with My Name, explores life and family in Puerto Rico and becoming a minority in the Lehigh Valley.

When Ávila learned that he was the first Latino to win Pennsylvania’s Professor of the Year, he felt “both good and terrible.” He had resisted focus on “identity stuff” in his teaching and poetry but discovered in creating the show that his personal experience conjured a profound response. Through the sounds of a father’s nightmares, the smells of Abuela’s rice and red beans and the sting of racist encounters, Ávila accomplishes far more than generic platitudes could muster.

For two years, he’s hauled his props to colleges, community events and corporate diversity trainings across the country, and when he looks at the little table with a photo of his grandmother and a genuinely old tub of Vick’s VapoRub, emotions and insights of a lifetime flood into him and through to the audience.

“With a Latino audience,” Ávila says, “it’s a loud, proud celebration.” Among mixed groups, “it’s one and a half hours of unity.” Predominately white groups are often quiet, respectfully taking in a new perspective. The title of the show refers to the difficulty many stateside Americans face in pronouncing and spelling Dr. Javier Ávila’s relatively common name, showing the obliviousness of an enduringly segregated society.

This month, Ávila performs The Trouble with My Name for free at Lafayette College, marking the anniversary of the shamefully mishandled Hurricane Maria disaster in Puerto Rico and raising money for these U.S. citizens still in need. November finds Ávila and his show touring Puerto Rico.